Facebook is under fire in two of the world's biggest economies
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/facebook-under-fire-from-regulators-in-germany-and-brazil-165034185.html
Facebook's (FB) commanding position as the world's leading social network is also making it a juicy target for an array of government regulators.
Just this week, Facebook, which has 1.6 billion members, found itself at odds with regulators in Germany and Brazil. Germany is using tougher antitrust rules to pursue privacy issues at Facebook, while Brazil briefly arrested a Facebook executive after prosecutors complained the company's WhatsApp messaging service wasn't turning over data. And just a few weeks ago, the social network lost a French court ruling over possible censorship charges.
The clashes mark just the latest examples of the company's vast user data collection efforts and occasionally shifting privacy policies drawing attention from regulators around the world. As Facebook has grown, it has built one of the largest caches of data about individuals ever assembled, creating concerns about how the data might be used or shared. Last year, Facebook faced scrutiny of its privacy practices from France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, among others. And Facebook's various messaging platforms now carry communications not just from billions of law-abiding people but also potentially from criminals, hackers and terrorists....
The case in Brazil echoes in some ways the current, high-profile battle between the FBI and Apple (AAPL) over the contents of an iPhone used by one of the deceased San Bernardino terrorists. Brazilian authorities investigating a drug trafficking ring demanded that WhatsApp provide decrypted messages, but the Facebook unit said it did not have the ability to decode its users' communications. Criminal Court Judge Marcel Maia Montalvão initially imposed fines, then ordered the arrest of Facebook vice president Diego Dzodan for "repeated noncompliance."
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